


Messy Day

by ChartreuseChanteuse



Category: Dukes of Hazzard, The Dukes of Hazzard (TV), The Dukes of Hazzard - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChartreuseChanteuse/pseuds/ChartreuseChanteuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too much rain, too little space and  four walls are no substitute for freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Messy Day

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a very short vignette. It's still a vignette, just twice the length it was meant to be.

Dirt, their lives were made of this. And sun, bees humming low and heavy past their ears, borne on wind gusts that rose and settled too quickly to change much of anything. Mountains looming over them to the west and the flatlands of town to the east, and it didn't matter about the temperature; Dukes were meant to be outside. Mostly, there was always the post-harvest week spent closer to home, rarely straying further than the porch or barn, while their bodies recuperated from a certain amount of abuse. And even those days included crisp air and the pungent smell of turned earth.

Walls were no substitute, not for freedom and space. Same panels of dirty plaster they'd grown up with, eaten in front of, slept between. They might have taken it into their heads to paint them, fresh coat covering what had taken years to dirty up just so. Except the moisture, the non-stop pouring rain and the mustiness it created, the swampy invasion of dank air into their kitchen, living room and even the innermost rooms where they slept, and no paint could dry in that. Mold had to be setting into the floorboards, the corners of their rooms, and their brains.

Days of waiting for the rain to stop, because even though Daisy might be the only Duke made of sugar and at risk for melting, the sort of deluge they'd tolerated over the last half a week didn't exactly lend itself to anything but staring out the window and watching for a break. The first day had been entertaining in its own way, the CB receiver in the kitchen crackling to life every few minutes with reports of yet another flooded road, one more stuck car. Not-quite-curses from Cooter, because Hazzard drivers, natural fools that they were, didn't know when to give up their wheels or mobility. But when the next day had forgotten to dawn, just sort of slowly paled from black to gray, and the water just kept streaming from the sky, the county had shut itself down. From schools to grocery stores, municipal buildings to roadhouses, closed signs hung as the radio cautioned against going out for any non-emergency reasons at all that day.

The third morning of heavy rain and four Dukes trapped inside; Daisy moved slowly and complained of a headache, which got her sent back to bed. The boys slipped and slopped across the sucking mud of the farmyard only to get the hairy eyeball from Maudine and the hens, like they had spent the night discussing the situation and deciding that unless the humans made the rain stop falling, there would be no peace in the barn. Not a single hen had laid for them, and what the mule had left stunk to high heaven. Breakfast was grayish, somewhere between grits and oatmeal, warm but not tasty, and Uncle Jesse shrugged and said if they wanted something better they needed to have a long talk with the chickens or Mother Nature, whichever they figured would work better toward getting them some fresh food into the house.

It was right about then that he started to notice what had always been there in front of him: the unfortunate grasp Bo had on his silverware. Hand wrapped around his spoon in a death grip, knuckles on top and fingers hooked underneath. Like he was no more than five, but Bo knew better, had been taught younger than that how to hold a spoon. Sloppy drips of glop falling back into the bowl as he rushed his hand from here to there, and a man wasn't meant to put up with watching that out of the corner of his eye, so Luke swatted the back of Bo's head. Tolerated a miffed glare and a whined complaint, not to mention Jesse's assessing eyes, but his point was made. So clearly gotten across that his cousin's eating style changed, no more plops of oatmeal splashing back into the bowl, not with how the boy had leaned himself forward to catch it before it could fall. Curved back, hand still holding the spoon all wrong, and compensating for what Luke wouldn't let him do by slurping. Sucking the food up quick before gravity could claim it away from him. Elbow in Bo's side didn't do anything but get him groused at, and Jesse's growl telling them to keep it down. Daisy, after all, was resting just a thin wall away. She didn't need to hear them arguing, though apparently the slurping was not deemed loud enough to disturb her.

Clank-slurp, clank-slurp, and Luke reckoned he might as well give up on eating, what with such charming noises taking place to his left. So he set to loudly washing dishes, gently taking Jesse's dirty mug and bowl with him as he went, then returning to swipe Bo's out from under him.

"I wasn't done," got crabbed at him.

And, "Yes you was," seemed unconvincing, considering the way his cousin stood up, hands on hips and chest puffed.

But, "Boys…" in that low, grumbling voice was enough to put an end to it before it even got properly started. A shame, that.

By the time dishes were done and the table had been wiped down, when he'd had one more mug of coffee and no more excuses for hiding out in the kitchen, Luke found the remaining male members of his family in the living room.

They were, all of them, well past the age of majority. Jesse may also have been past the age of flexibility, but Luke would have laid wager with all the money in his pocket (which at last count amounted to a whopping five and a half bucks) that it wasn't his aching knees or back that made the old man sit up like a proper human being, but simple maturity. And respect for the others around him, trapped into the same small space of a tiny, slowly rotting, farmhouse. Jesse was one man; he took up as much, and no more than enough, space for a single body.

Bo was a sloppy mess, sprawled across the whole of the couch, sock feet hanging over one end. Yawning and scratching and otherwise doing absolutely nothing of value. Their elderly uncle, at least, was reading. The Bible, because the newspaper hadn't been delivered in two days and probably wouldn't be for another few until the swollen river stopped leaking over into the low-lying portions of Old Mill Road, creating impromptu ponds and mud holes.

"Bo," he complained, seemed perfectly legitimate to him. There was a chair, which Uncle Jesse had staked solid claim to, there was a couch, and aside from those two genuine articles of furniture, there was the piano bench and the bricks of the hearth to sit on. He figured there was no reason he should settle for hard and uncomfortable perches when by all rights at least half the couch ought to have been his. Maybe more; he'd always been bigger than Bo, from the day they'd come here until somewhere around five years ago. Just because the brat had gone through a final growth spurt at the last minute, beating Luke at a race he hadn't even known he was competing in, didn't mean he'd earned the right to take up more space. Not when Luke had been bigger for longer.

Shoving at his cousin's feet, he tried to make old lazy sit himself up properly, and met with full out resistance.

"Leave me alone, Luke," the boy complained like he was being inappropriately rousted in the middle of the night, instead of just a few hours after waking from a solid eight hours of sleep.

"Sit up," Luke griped back at them, to a warning stare from their uncle.

"Share," was all the old man said.

Pouty face, but Bo did as he was told. Mostly, enough to get by. Sitting up just enough to accomplish a sullen slouch into his own corner of the couch, and any second now his tongue was going to come out. Maybe even buzz itself up into a raspberry, because he'd been forced to act like a half-grown boy instead of a toddler.

"Your feet stink," Luke pointed out as he settled onto the cushion that had been vacated under protest – because it was necessary. Some things could be ignored, some things could be overlooked. But stinky feet, they had to be mentioned, noted, sneered about, rectified. "Are those yesterday's socks?"

A rustle, just the sound of Bo's shirt rubbing up against the threadbare grain of the upholstery underneath him as he shrugged.

"Bo?" A proper answer, he was fairly certain, was required here. After all, he'd asked a direct question, the kind that no Duke was allowed to avoid, ignore or lie in response to. "Them socks is how old?"

"Years," came the answer, followed by rolled eyes. As if it wasn't a deliberate attempt to misunderstand, to make Luke look like the fool for asking.

"And they was last washed?" he followed up, because sometimes he just had to. Questions had answers, genuine ones, and he reckoned he had a right to know them.

"Whenever Daisy washed them. I don't know, I ain't stood over her and watched her do it."

"Boys," was a second warning from Jesse. One more (or two, because really the offenses were small, and sometimes they could get away with more of that type) and the threat of the strap would get whipped out like a gun from a holster.

"When," he asked through gritted teeth, hard to say whether it was the brat's avoidance or the stench of those feet that made him do it. "Was the last time you changed them?"

Sweet smile from Bo, Lavinia's angel come back from where Luke would have sworn he'd been lost forever somewhere in about nineteen seventy. "When did it start raining?"

Boy pulled his feet off the floor then, made a show of sitting sideways, like he was going to curl them under himself, but of course he had too much leg by miles for that. So if his feet were – oops – less than an inch from Luke's thigh, it surely wasn't the colossal blonde's fault. He was, after all, trying to keep his smelly self to his own side of the couch.

And if Luke's hand accidentally, without any forethought or planning, smacked itself into the ankle that was, after all, on the ragged edge or encroaching on his side of the couch, well it was just the clumsiness of a muscle-bound man. Too strong for his own good, and sometimes his arms couldn't quite stay put where they were meant to.

"Luke," got whined at him, blue eyes meeting his with hurt little blinks, and he might have felt bad for a second or two.

"That's it," Jesse interrupted whatever Luke's emotions might have wanted to get around to being. "You boys can't think of nothing better to do, you can scrub the kitchen floor."

One more swat to Bo's feet, because there was nothing left to lose, and, "See what you done?" came out of his mouth, even if it wasn't any more his cousin's fault than his own.

Wasn't neither of them thrilled with this turn of events, a fact made more than obvious by the way they slapped suds onto the floor, then scrubbed at them like the tiny bubbles had somehow offended them. And soap had no density, no real weight of its own, so it shouldn't have been particularly surprising when some of it got airborne. Tiny balls, floating above the dirty brown of the floor, and it made Bo smile. Wide, bright, downright gleeful, and he blew at what was aloft, watched it float a few feet before stilling, then sinking back to the floor.

That could be ignored, would have to be. There would be no peace of any sort until the linoleum—well, it wouldn't shine, hadn't been capable of shining since before either of the fools scrubbing at it now got themselves born, but—looked a heck of a lot less dingy.

But when the childish delight over games that Luke wouldn't join him in left Bo's face, the man fully engaged himself in doing nothing much at all. Just sitting on his knees and watching Luke work.

Which got studiously ignored; it was bickering that got them sent in here to engage themselves in this frustrating distraction in the first place.

But his cousin couldn't leave it at that, couldn't tolerate anything other than having the whole of Luke's attention, even if it was just to get himself smacked upside his head again, so when there was no part of the floor left dirty except the corner that the brat had planted himself in, and there was no choice except for the two of them to share one small space, Bo finally quit being lazy and started to scrub. Not with good intentions, nothing like being helpful, just trying to crash his brush into Luke's, like they were nothing more than the toy cars of their childhood. Made for an interesting challenge, trying to keep his knuckles from getting smashed, but he couldn't give in and grin about it, couldn't let it be fun. There'd be no getting anywhere if he let himself get dragged into a pointless game now, when they were so close.

Only seemed to bring out the worst in Bo, the way Luke was studiously paying him no mind, made his cousin quit playing by whatever rules he'd created for this game, and embrace simple aggressiveness. Fingers smashing into fingers, wooden handle following, scraped knuckles and the burn of soap into them.

"Bo," he hollered.

"Dang it, Luke," got snapped back at him for no justifiable reason that he could work out. Maybe he'd hurt himself, too, with that little maneuver, but more likely he was resenting the lengths to which he'd had to go to get a response out of his cousin, to get what he wanted.

"Out," he growled, because the boy was insatiable. Needed more attention than any one person could give, especially when there was still that three-by-three square of floor to scrub.

"Fine!" got hollered at him, loud enough for Jesse to hear, to wake Daisy if she'd managed to fall asleep. And assuming his voice was not enough, there was the way Bo stormed to the door, noisily separated his own boots from the others on the mat there, shoved them on, then kicked against the floor to get them solidly onto his feet. Door slamming, and near-violent clomping down the steps until his feet must've hit mud with more of a squish than a thud.

Resting back on his heels then, Luke sighed. "Soon as I finish here, I'll go after him," he announced to the shadow that fell over him from behind. By the bulk it was Jesse, though he wouldn't have been half surprised to hear Daisy tsking over how he'd gone and hurt their baby cousin's feelings.

"You're finished," he got informed. "Ain't nothing left to do but rinse then put everything away, and I ain't so old I can't handle that."

He could have argued, might should have. Insisted that the floor was his responsibility, that Bo needed time to cool off. But he didn't because the kitchen wasn't where he wanted to be, any more than it had been Bo's intention to get them assigned to duty there. So he nodded resolutely, made a show of huffing over the nature of overly sensitive cousins, and stood to slip his own boots on, near silently.

"Might take me a while to find him," he announced, got a nodding response from the old man, then closed the door behind him to step out into the rain.

Heavy, but not as blinding as it had been, and in truth, it smelled of spring. World washed fresh and clean and he reckoned it wouldn't hurt him or Bo none to get a little wet in it.

Cut himself a diagonal across the farmyard, stepped between two trees and he was in a wooded section of their property. One, two, three oak trees, and he turned to see Bo there, resting against the backside of the fourth, widest one.

"You all right?" he asked, grabbing his cousin's right hand from where it had been casually at his side, thumb dug down in his front pocket. Quick look at the knuckles there, and if they were skinned, it was so lightly as to be invisible.

Which didn't stop Bo from milking his sympathies, from looking at his own hand mournfully. Cute, in its own way, well nigh onto adorable, what with how those blonde bangs hung, heavy with rain, into his eyes. Which, of course, forced Luke to reach up and push them out of the way, nudge them to the side. And feel himself get sucked into that same vortex that he'd spent the better part of the last few months spinning around in. The one where one touch wasn't enough, and the power his cousin held over him, those eyes asking for more even before his mouth got there, was more important than their proximity to the house, the water falling out of the sky, or the fact that it was wrong, and quite possibly insane, to love Bo this much.

"You was quick enough to get out of there," came out with a smile, Bo's breath visible in the dank air. "I figured you'd be another five minutes at least."

He shrugged, probably ought to have felt worse about it all than he did. "Guess you was convincing enough." Of course he was. Bo had broken hearted, hurt and miserable down to a tee. "He let me go."

Hand slipping down to Bo's cheek then, behind his neck and he tugged him forward for a kiss. "Come on," he said, before his body could get the better of his brain. Grabbed Bo's hand and dragged him deeper into the woods. Because if it was going to be convincing, if Jesse was going to believe he'd had to look for any amount of time to find his cousin, they needed to get a lot further from the house, let more of the rain soak into their hair and clothes, and track one heck of a lot more mud back into the house on the soles of their boots.

"I hope," he said, as Bo's arm came to rest across his shoulders, eager fingers already stroking at his shirt like they were just itching to pull it off. "You're ready to scrub that kitchen floor again when we get home and drip all over it."

A smile then, because Bo reckoned it was worth it. Because he'd done the lion's share of buying themselves an hour or so of privacy, and when it came right down to it, Luke would clean up after whatever mess this little escape of theirs caused them to make.


End file.
